24mm or 35mm

I am having some sort of sweet dilemma of getting wider prime than my 50L..... 50L is working great and delivering extremely good magical shot. But I am always wondering of wider, less distortion compared to my 17-40L and primary for street shot & portrait with strobes.

I am in serious consideration between 24L vs 35L, leaning towards 35L for the focal length but doubt that the focal length is close to 50L.....

Walk around with your 17-40 and hold it at 24mm and 35mm. look at the same scene and both focal lengths and that should tell you which focal length is best suited for you.

hey imperian i went through the same process and in the end i went for the 24mm L mk1. I decided on the 24mm as its a good all round focal lengh on crop, i have a 40d. I use it for landscape shots where i find it wide enough with minimal distortion. If the view is wider then i just take a number of shots in portait and stitch in ms ice. I also use it for low light where the wide aperture is v usefull. The mk11 is reported to be even better but the mk1 is no slouch. heres a couple of shots

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/43288034@N06/5​613976255/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/43288034@N06/5​813194468/

i think the cheapest way to know is to set the 17-40 at each FL and see which shots you like more. of course, the best way would be to rent both and see how they are, but that money could go towards the primes..

i too, knew i would have this dilemma. so i decided to purchase a 50 1.4 first, which is 95% of the 50L for a 1/4th of the price so even if i do decide to get a 35L it wouldn't be too costly for such similar FL. if you like the 35L maybe you can sell the 50L for a 50 1.4 canon or sigma, and both will still cost less than a 24L. but in your case i might just go with the 24L and pick up a 85L/135L after.

I also have the 50L and I went with the 24L II because I have a 60D and 5D2 so I figured I would sorta get both ( at least in a way ) but I really like the 24L on my 60D so I have considered switching to the 35L but 35 is so close to 50 it hardly seems worth it to have 2 lenses so close so I kept the 24.

IMO 35 and 50 are the most practical FL"s so going with a 50 1.4 and 35L is not a bad idea but I would not part with my 50L for anything. I may go the opposite way and pick up a cheap 35 2.0 which i hear is not bad.


Both are great lenses so I would not let sharpness etc factor in.

If you don´t need AF the Bower/Samyang/etc 35mm 1.4 can be quite a good deal. The MTF chart is better than the Canon 35L.

If you go with the 24mm, you can crop to the 35mm. Can't do the reverse!

Bob

I was trying to decide whether I should go with 35mm or 50mm first. I went through lightroom looking at what focal length my favourite shots were taken at. This helped me decide what to get first.

Hot Bob wrote in post #12781027
If you go with the 24mm, you can crop to the 35mm. Can't do the reverse!

Bob

Wrong! You can do a pano.
Cropping loses resolution, panos increase resolution.
:p

luigis wrote in post #12781069
Wrong! You can do a pano.
Cropping loses resolution, panos increase resolution.
:p

Pano of people moving around?

With a FF body, I consider the 35mm FL to be a better choice for you than 24mm. Even in the days of film, a number of photojournalists mounted 35mm lenses to the body and did most of their street shooting of news worthy photos with that FL.
24mm on FF body runs risk of you getting too close to your subjects and inducing perspective distortion! My experience in shooting weddings over the decades in three formats have taught me the dangers of perspective distortion exaggerating body parts of folks who are too close to my lens, when I have any lens with wider AOV than 75 degrees (diagonal)...a 17mm lens on ASP-C, a 28mm lens on FF, a 50mm lens on 645 is the practical limit of usable wide angle unless you are shooting scene-establishing photos of the venue and people in it; too wide for group photos, though.

If comparing just IQ, 35mm is still considered THE ONE if not the best Canon prime ever. However, owners of the new 24mm f/1.4 II seems to rave a lot about this baby so I guess IQ is probably catching up. If that's proved so, I would go for 24mm. The wider the better as I love to shoot environmental portraits at wide open aperture. Also, with 24mm, I could be as close as 25cm (v/s 30cm) away from my subject, which is great for shooting babies and up close without distortions. See my shots for env portraits,

At 17mm, f4.0

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When I shot film, I found 28 a bit wide for general use. The 28 on film would be like walking around with a fast 17 on a crop. I would be happier with the 35L on full frame.
I use the 35f2 on a crop and like the focal length. I used a 40mm focal length on film a number of years ago, and a 35-70 mm zoom. The 35 would be fine on a 5D2.

I may have a different use for a wide angle prime than others but I really like 24mm on a FF. 35mm would not work for me shooting concerts from the pit. I pretty much use the 24L and the 70-200 MKII and rarely find reason to switch any lenses out although sometimes I wish for a bit wider. 25-69 gap I rarely miss. The perspective distortion is not as big a problem as some make out, imo.

Slightly cropped.